Percy Jackson's Little Sister
by Princess Of The Galaxies
Summary: Her name is Chrysanthe Jackson. Most of the things that happened to Percy, happened to her... This is sort of a rewrite of PJ and The Lightning Thief, but I've added some twists to the storyline. Rated T to be safe.


Why hello! This is my first PJ fic, so please enjoy. Reviews might be nice! :)

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1. I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER.

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now.

Believe what-ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Chryssa Jackson. But I was adopted when I was 5 by Louise Evergreen.

So Evergreen, now.

I'm twelve years old, now. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Asters, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mr. Asters was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Jamey Ricks, the freckly, blackette kleptomaniac girl, hitting one of my best friends, Jacob, in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Jacob was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. Me and Emery cracked up that day.

Anyway, Jamey Ricks was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly black hair, and she knew neither me or Emery could do anything back to her because me and Emery were already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me and her with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

Emery Smith was my other best friend.

"I'm going to kill her," Emery mumbled.

Jacob tried to calm her down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

He dodged another piece of Jamey's lunch.

"That's it." She started to get up, but me and Jacob pulled her back down.

"You and Chryssa are already on probation," he reminded us, causing me to cringe. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Jamey Ricks right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess me and Emery were about to get ourselves into.

Mr. Asters led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone Colum with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides.

I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Willow, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Willow was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Willow loved Jamey Ricks and figured me and Emery were devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at us and say, "Now, honeys," real sweet, and we knew we were going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after she'd made us erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Jacob and Emery I didn't think Mrs. Willow was human. Jacob looked at us, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Asters kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Jamey Ricks snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Asters stopped his story.

"Ms. Evergreen," he said, "did you have a comment?"

My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."

Mr. Asters pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Asters said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because ..."

"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and—"

"God?" Mr. Asters asked.

"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind me, Jamey Ricks mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Ms. Evergreen," Asters said, "to paraphrase Miss Rick's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Jacob muttered.

"Shut up," Jamey hissed, her face an even brighter red than her best friend Mimi's hair.

Me, Emery, and Jacob snickered under our breath.

At least Jamey got packed, too. Mr. Asters was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Asters looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Ms. Evergreen. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Willow, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls, including me and Emery, holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doo-fuses.

Jacob, Emery and I were about to follow when Mr. Asters said, "Ms. Evergreen."

I knew that was coming.

I told my besties to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Asters. "Sir?"

Mr. Asters had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Asters told me.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Chryssa Evergreen."

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman per-son who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Asters expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Asters took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers.

Jamey Ricks was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Willow wasn't seeing a thing.

Jacob, Emery and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Jacob asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Asters. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."

Jacob didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought one of them was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, Emery said, "Can I have your apple?"

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let her take it.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr. Asters parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Jamey Ricks appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Emery's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Jamey was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Chryssa pushed me, and Emery stole my lunch!"

Mrs. Willow materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Willow was sure poor little Jamey was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Willow turned on me and Emery. There was a tri-umphant fire in her eyes, as if we'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"

"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me, dears," Mrs. Willow said.

"Wait!" Jacob yelped. "It was me. I pushed her. I stole 'er lunch!"

We stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Willow scared Jacob to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Blue," she said.

"But—"

"You— will—stay—here."

Jacob looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, man," Emery told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honeys," Mrs. Willow barked at us." Now."

Jamey Ricks smirked.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then we turned to face Mrs. Willow, but she wasn't there.

She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at us to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brains falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counsellor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure.

I went after Mrs. Willow.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Jacob. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me, Emery and Mr. Asters, like he wanted Mr. Asters to notice what was going on, but Mr. Asters was absorbed in his novel.

I looked back up. Mrs. Willow had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, Emery thought. She's going to make us buy a new shirt for Jamey at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

We followed her deeper into the museum. When we finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Willow stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Willow.

Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honeys," she said.

We did the safe thing. We said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.

I said, "I'll—We'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Chryssa Jackson, Emery Smith," Mrs. Willow said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

Neither of us knew what she was talking about.

All we could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy we'd been selling out of our dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized me and Emery got our essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away our grade. Or worse, they were going to make us read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, we don't..." Emery started.

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me and Emery to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Asters, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Chryssa!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Willow lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Aster's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Willow spun toward Emery with a murderous look in her eyes.

Emery's knees were jelly. Her hands were shaking so bad she almost dropped to the ground.

She snarled, "Die, honeys!"

And she flew straight at her.

Absolute terror and fear for my friend ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!

Mrs. Willow was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

We were alone.

The was a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mr. Asters wasn't there. Nobody was there but me and Emery.

Both of our hands were still trembling. Our lunches must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something of the sort.

Had we imagined the whole thing?

I put an arm around Emery's shoulder as we went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Jacob was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Jamey Ricks was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw us, she said, "I hope Mrs. Doppler whipped your butt."

When I finally found my voice, I said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Doppler. I asked Jamey what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

Emery asked Jacob where Mrs. Willow was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at us, so I thought he was messing with us.

"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Asters sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Ms. Evergreen."

I handed Mr. Asters his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said hesitantly, "where's Mrs. Willow?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Willow. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Chryssa, there is no Mrs. Willow on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Willow at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"

I couldn't help it. I fainted right there and then.

See? I added a twist. Again, reviews would be nice, and I'll update as much as I can! Love you guys.


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